[USER] OpenPower 720 support?

[Joel Schopp]

>>My question, though, is that I'm not really keen on using SLES9, and I 
>>really want to use the 2.6 kernel so that rules out RHES. I am perfectly 
>>comfortable building my own distro to put on this system, but I'm 
>>concerned that things like LPAR support and other fancy bits are not 
>>present in the kernel.org kernel and I'd be losing access to the 
>>features I'm paying for.
>>
>>Can anyone give me some thoughts on whether using one of these machines 
>>with an in-house distro is a wise move?
> 

An in-house distro seems like a whole lot of extra work.  SLES9 is very 
nice.

> 
> Let me just say that the software that interfaces with the HMC is very
> powerful.  So powerful, in fact, that it has a number of very
> intertwined components.  
> 
> I once knew a young, naive, Linux kernel developer who thought that he
> could do DLPAR operations on his Debian machine.  He failed, and uses
> SLES9 for that development to this day.  It can surely be done, he just
> wasn't clever or patient enough to figure it out. 

Now, to the best of my knowledge all of the features you want are in the 
mainline kernel.org kernel.  In specific I know that logical 
partitioning, dynamic logical partitioning of cpus & io slots, shared 
processors, etc are.  I'm even pretty sure (but don't quote me on this) 
the virtual scsi, virtual ethernet, and virtual console are too.

But as Dave was saying, to partition the machine(s) you will need to buy 
an HMC (hardware management console).  One HMC is enough for several 
machines.  Some of the features need software to run on Linux to talk to 
that HMC.  Features such as dynamic partitioning (moving things around 
without rebooting a partition) or virtual scsi.  You don't need the 
software to use shared processors or to statically partition the machine 
between partition reboots.  The software is no cost, but it is not yet 
open source.  It officially supports SLES8, SLES9 and RHEL3.
http://techsupport.services.ibm.com/server/lopdiags/suselinux/hmcserver

To quote IBMs page.
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/openpower/hardware/720_options.html
"If more than a single partition is needed on the server, the IBM 
Hardware Management Console (HMC) is required. This workstation is used 
solely for console functions. It is required to create, define and 
modify a partition, but is not required to run the partition. An HMC can 
act as a console for more than one server or partition. More than one 
HMC can be attached to a server or partition.

The HMC is attached to an HMC-only port on the back of the server's 
system unit. It is ordered not as a feature code of the server, but as a 
7310-CR2 or 7310-C03. CR2 is the rack-mounted HMC and C03 is the 
desk-side HMC.

IBM ships a set of console functionality software with the HMC. This 
software cannot be modified by the client and thus is called firmware."

If you have further technical questions you can send them to me directly 
to avoid cluttering up what really should be a development list.